Posts by Down not across

Re: More Panic Buying

It is not the lack of geolocation hardware, but removable battery. If you can't pull the battery out, you can't really turn your phone off.

Re: Don't give them ideas...

Give them more good reasons, and they'll augment the same with autonomy and computer vision and police-drone object recognition capability. And with even more reasons, they'll perhaps start teaching their neural nets how to dogfight, develop mass production and widely disseminate such plans, designs, code and weights.

So, hunter killer drones. And I guess the control system is called Skynet?

Re: "I would encourage you to give it careful consideration"

And they expect people to leave at the first possible moment under these terms in the current circumstances?

Or in any circumstances. Hardly an incentive to give the minimum they're obliged by law anyway.

(...apart from the possible ex-gratia pension contrinbution, which given the generosity of the offer, is unlikely to be anything substantial)

Re: The heroes from my childhood

Obelix' words often echo through my mind whenever I visit a country for the first time; "These Norwegians are crazy!".

Or visit to Switzerland..

What did you think of it?

Obelix: It was flat.

Re: Ok, the lesson to learn here . .

Just don't trust financial startups that don't have a banking charter.

Sadly entities with a banking charter are not necessarily any more trustworthy.

Re: ServiceNow is great

Now we are forced to use ServiceNow which means no more tickets as its so unusable and crap.

I love it. Now we get on with things I want done instead of solving tickets!

Unless of course you're forbidden to do do anything without a ticket. In which case you can hardly do any real work as you spend most of the day waiting for ServiceNever to do looks ups for the fields,etc.

I've proabably used most of the major ticketing systems in the last few decades and SN is definitely the worst I have come across. Bloated and frustratingly slow.

Re: Win2000

I remember reluctantly upgrading to Win2k from NT4 to get USB support. I was pleasantly surprised, as it turned out to be rock solid. I think it only crashed once which turnd out to be DIMM gone bad. Most reliable OS (wiith a GUI) to ever come out of Redmond.

Re: Why reinstall Win3.1?

Windows to OS/2 - why bother? NO compelling reason!

Stability.

I had a DEC 486sx and SparcStation 10 on my desk at one previous workplace.

I replaced the WFWG with OS/2 Warp, out of curiosity mostly. Granted, getting the Pathworks ethernet cards to play ball was bit painful. Once it was up and running it was bloody fantastic. Better performance and virtually no more crashes. Also if something did crash it didn't take the whole OS down with it, unlike with WFWG.

Why did I need a PC when I had the SS? Well, the usual word/excel crap. Oh and ALL-IN-1 (sorry... for anyone else who had to use it)

My 4-way has an C14 plug on it, and I have a selection of short X-to-C14 cables.

<pedant class="especially since you used boggin icon">

If your 4-way has C14 pllug on it, then surely the selection of short cables have C13 plug on them.

</pedant>

Re: its FPGA chip

Every once an a while the stupid idea of "building" a VAX or PDP-11 on a FPGA core wombles into my mind.

You, of course, know that there are several implementations. w11 is one fairly complete 11/70. There are of course others too.

Plain vanilla OS please, telecos, and a carefully curated store of all that stuff you're sure we will find irresistible. You probably won't even need a working server for that.

Can't see that happening anytime soon. Probably not ever. Too many tie-ins/lock-ins/"monetization" for telcos to stop bundling unremovble crapware.

The easy solution is to stop buying the device from the telco. Just get SIM only deal and buy the device yourself.

Re: Addicted to crapware

They could not let go of Symbian and would not see beyond their noses. Could have easily adopted Android OS with their super hardware. Yet became very complacent.

Actually they could. And did (to an extent). Unfortunately interal fighting and politics stood in the way of success.

Re: Nice idea, not a chance

Things people do can affect other people without their knowledge. Thus my constant dread that Stupid is going to take the rest of us with them. They don't realize they're doing it, but their mere association with the rest of us is enough.

Have an upvvote.

Case in point, WhatsApp. They have my phone number without my consent because people who have my phone number in their phone use WhatsApp and it hoovers all contacts up.

Yes they were. I have 7970E and 2 7914Rs in the rack. Just found copy of the install manual...

The disc drive weighs approximately 67kg (148lb); more than one person may be required to install it in the subsystem cabinet

May? Well I guess they were right. i have no idea how I managed to wrangle the drive into the cabinet, let alone align it with the pins in the rails.

If I recall correctly the drive is 132MB or so. Hmm, wonder if the 3k stil works, or more to the point if the tapes are stll bootable. Inrush current for the storage rack is quite impressive. Always flickered lights. Once spun up, it was safe to turn on the 3K itself. Joys of single phase in home environment.

Yes, and it didn't take long for storage to shring to half height and then down to 3.5".

I reckon you're right that we'd be nowhere close to where we are now.

Re: I wish they brought back the original V3i RAZR

Anyway, that *format* worked, the many imitations afterwards just could not quite live up to it. If someone could fit that with two proper screens I'm sure it would be impossible to make them fast enough.

I think just re-releasing the original, upgrade to current radios and screen technology, would probably sell out in no time. Just look at how HND has done with the "re-released" classic Nokias. Plenty of people who are thoroughly disillusioned with the so called smartphones.

I still have my old RAZR2 V8 in the box full of old Nokias.

Re: SCSI

...and you've got the right sort of terminator.

Aside from the necessary sacrifices, termination is nearly always the issue. If at all possible avoid passive terminators, and use active terminators.

Occasionally cabling (expcially external) is an issue, always beware cables with kinks in them.

(Don't forget the young goat...)

Re: In 1998...

hands up who remembers the MCA bus?

Raises hand, while muttering "thankfully didn't last long and EISA came along."

Re: Back in the day...

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the Sun keyboard with the control and shift keys (or was it shift and caps-lock?) interchanged.

You mean Sun's "UNIX layout" ...given how often you use control character it is perfect and much more natural. Decision to put caps lock (whcih is rarely used) where Ctrl should be was idiotic in the first place.

Luckily it is easy to rectify that with X11 and just swap the keys the way they're meant to be.

Re: Three films

One of my favourites is telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl

Re: On-call???

"Turns out, after my recovery of the Auspex box, someone decided I was now the expert on those machines and posted my name and direct phone number on the wall right next to them."

This is exactly why I no longer give out home/personal number to my employer. If they want to be able to contact me out of hours, they can provide me with a phone and I will have the option of turning it off or silent.

In this context, employer definitely includes any management, and most of colleagues as well, as it has been proven again and again that they can not be trusted not to abuse the information.

~110K items unread in main inbox folder mainly stuff she'd insisted her team CC her on, which was pretty much every mail they sent. She had a sub-folder for stuff she actually cared about.

Must be quite recent. Not that long ago Outlook would barf if you had more than 65535 mails in inbox.

No. Don't ask me how I know.

Re: Cup Holders

Don't get me started on the argument about shelves and shelves full of physical media. I still have a working (and occasionally used) Laserdisc player :-)

You get no arguments from me. I've said it many times before, you can pry my CLD-925 out my dead, cold hands.

I prefer the physical media. It works whether internet connection is working/good enough or not. It wiill keep working regardless of if the seller goes bust or changes its terms and conditions.

Speaking of LaserDisc, I actually prefer it to DVD/BR/whatever fully digital format. Maybe its me but it looks better despite resolution difference and feels more natural and you still get benefit of digital multi-channel audio.

Very lucky and/or have a recent phone. The idea is clearly, "Buy a new phone every 6 months or else".

I suppose luck can't be ruled out. It's not even as simple as choosing the right vendor. My Nokia 8 has been getting updates within a month (so currenly running Pie - August patchlevel), but from what I hear that is not necessarily the case with other, including more recent, Nokia phones.

Re: Even to this day...

Learn from the mistakes of others, you won't live long enough to make them all yourself !

I've come across some people who were challenging that.

Re: WarGames 8" floppies

They used to slot into a sleeve that was made of some amazing paper that couldn't be torn.

Tyvek^® by DuPont. Same was used with 5.25 diskettes (well some manufactures shipped paper/cardboard sleeves as they were cheapskates).

Re: Another reason for not being granted Data Protection Adequacy?

There is no prospect of our current Prime Minister facing reality. He will continue to tell us that we will all be better off and British Industry will boom when we leave the EU with no deal - either he is stark staring bonkers or he is deliberately lying to us.

Well markets have finally started to believe Boris in that UK will leave no matter what (and given he has no realistic chance to change or better the deal in the time there is, no deal is looking rather likely (unless blocked by parliament which leaves an interesting conundrum as to what happens)) and value of GBP has fallen again against USD and EUR.

If no deal Brexit happens it is likely to fall even further which of course is great for any industry exporting (as long as they don't need to buy too many materials from abroad to make whatever they are making). Never mind that low value of GBP will increase almost all prices (starting with oil/petrol) for everyone.

Re: Why is there a choice?

hmm… imagine you are waiting to board your plane when an announcement is made

“There will be a short delay to boarding as the technician carries out some maintenance. We appreciate your understanding and hope to continue boarding as quickly as possible”

Wait 20 minutes…

Display shows:

Update is 100% complete. Please don't turn off your airplane

[some spinner on the display rotating]

2 hours later

The display is still showing same message.

What I despair at is just to over the top political correctness and the complaints quoted in that BBC article. It appears that you just can't have any fun whatsoever. I will just have to be offended by all those people being offended at mild lighthearted fun.

Agreed, the hot hubby comeback was brilliant.

Re: the right to keep and bear arms

However printed copy of source code for PGP was legal export.

I did my part in proofreading the scans. OCR was pretty crap in those days, so lot of the code had to be effectively retyped.

Re: Disaster

I don't see any party having a majority to govern with out the support of the many minority groups. It is just a total and utter f**kup.

Perhaps its time to ditch the ancient two party system. Many countries have successful and stable coalition governments, so no reason why it shouldn't work in UK.

Re: What about oil cooling

The Fluorinert waterfall is enough reason to run a Cray-2.

Another one to run just for its looks would be Thinking Machines' Connection Machine.

Re: I prefer my Pi(es) Hot

Clanger. Yeah, I know pasty, and not a pie.

Re: Why not test it on earth?

At the bottom of the Atlantic you aren't any safer for a planet cracking meteor than in New York City to name just one place. If that meteor hits Earth anywhere, we are all gone. But that colony on Mars (or Venus or Ganymede or Europe) may survive.

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Re: It never gets any less true.

I use perl and regular expressions all the time. Just like most other programming constructs, you need to engage brain and think what you're doing.

That doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes and had to debug WTF is going on when things have not worked quite as expected. Usually issues are due to missing some rare (or thought to be nonexistent) case in testing.

Debugging regex issues can be challenging, but that doesn't change that fundametally they are extremely useful.

TLDR; You can pry regex out of my dead cold hands

Oh and thanks for the honest explanation Cloudflare, you certainly have gone up few notches in my book. Very refreshing.

Re: It comes to mind

I haven't read the book, but I did see the film on Netflix. Well worth watching/reading.

Re: They are still very much a work in progress

I was doing that with X10 kit a third of a century ago. Still am. And it isn't listening in on my conversations. Nor does it require an Internet connection.

I still have bunch of X10 kit around, still working fine doing their job. Combine with CM11 or something and you can build as elaborate systems as you wish.

I was quite inspired back in the day Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar articles about HCS in Byte and have ever since have various parts of homes that I've lived in automated by X10 and homebrew solutions.

Re: Not a new concept

I was working with the really old 68HC05 series and when I went to download the assembler and linker

That takes me back a bit. I did some designs based on 68HC11 and loved working with that MCU. Had some fun with BUFFALO and as11.